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Prosser said people living outside city jurisdiction who want urban services like parks and libraries have to create various special service districts to provide them those services.
“There’s no one in that situation that’s looking at how it all fits together,” he said.
Washington County leaders convened an Urbanization Forum last year to discuss where and how to grow as more and more people move to the area over the next few decades. The group, made up of county officials, as well as representatives from various service districts and cities including Tigard, Tualatin and Sherwood, held four meetings between April and December 2008.
The agreement they approved in December states that “all future additions to the Urban Growth Boundary must be governed and urbanized by a City.”
Russell said residents of unincorporated areas fear that if the city uses the technique of cherry stemming — or annexing land not directly connected to the city, then proving services via a stem of annexed land or city jurisdiction such as a road — unincorporated areas will be made into islands and forced to annex.
She also pointed out that residents of unincorporated areas were not fairly represented during the forum’s vote because only one county commissioner was present.
“You can’t have a forum and create policy and not include the people who are affected by it, and that’s exactly what they did,” Russell said.
Washington County Commission Chairman Tom Brian emphasized that the forum’s agreement is not policy and will require much more discussion before it is finalized.
“These conversations about urban planning are going to go on for a year or two,” Brian said. “I’m hoping we can start more active community planning by area so the community can fully participate and have a voice.”
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"Counties are not set up to provide urban services," said Tigard City Manager Craig Prosser. "Its not their function."
Precisely.
If you want to live in an urban area, you shouldn't expect a county government to subsidize all of your services. It doesn't matter what you (the resident) want, what matters is what's best for the county at-large, and that means not providing services to urban areas. It severely detracts from the county's ability to provide service equity to the rural areas of the county.
Seriously, get over yourselves and incorporate your own city or be annexed to an adjacent city.
(email verified)
Thu, Apr 09, 2009 at 08:49 AM
county government subsidizing services? Really? What are those items on my property tax? Imaginary payments for police, fire, street lights, schools, etc?
Its pretty funny that counties say they are not equipped to handle these services yet they have been providing them for decades with considerable success.
Face it, this is nothing but a money grab, think Washington County will cut staff and budget when they give away these properties to Tigard?
(email verified)
Thu, Apr 09, 2009 at 02:04 PM
Pretty easy answer.
Ever heard of a CPO being listened to by the Board of County Commissioners and its department heads, including the elected officials (like the Sheriff's Department)?
Does the county respond to the CPO's requests and recommendations?
This isn't only the case in Washington County.
(email verified)
Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 04:08 PM
To Joseph - You are mistaken, The County does not subsidize the Urban services, the residents pay for them. If you live in the Rural area of Wash. CO. then you don't pay the same taxes that the people in urban unincorporated Wash. CO do. Those people pay extra taxes for their services. If they incorporate into a more expensive city then that money goes away and you don't get any more service then you are getting today.
The County has been providing urban services for decades and they do it very well. They have also set it up so that people in the cities and outside the urban growth boundary don't subsidize the urban unincorporated areas.
The Cities are greedy and simply want the tax dollars, just look at a map of Beaverton. You will notice that they annex around places that don't produce much in the way for property taxes and create lots of calls for the police (like mobile home parks). They have annexed several miles of street without the houses that line them (Canyon Road) just to get to a nice area. They even annex the MAX lines to get to nice neighborhoods, that is a great deal for them because they don't have to maintain them! Nike finally put the hammer to Beaverton when they tried to muscle up on them, that was the only thing that slowed them down.
Tigard is now trying to do the same thing, they were unable to annex Bull Mt. so now they are trying to subvert the process and annex the new area west of Bull Mt. where there is no one to complain, then they will surround Bull Mt. and force it into the City.
Real nice place to live huh?
(email verified)
Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 03:19 PM
Strike that: Bull Mountain is not resisting city control. Many residents see annexation as the most realistic and cost effective option for governance. We expect better reporting from you Tigard Times. Please reach beyond the anti-Tigard club next time.
(email verified)
Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 10:42 PM
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Re: Bull Mountain resists city control again
The funny thing about the forum's "agreement", was that it was only an agreement in the mind of the moderator of the forum. I don't think that there was even complete accord from the cities present, and certainly the service districts and Sheriff's office had severe misgivings about the statemet of policy. This would include several of the County Commisioners that were there in December.
No formal vote was held among the participants. And as such any statement that a "consensus", (the moderator's term), was reached can only be taken by faith, as there is no written (or recorded) record to indicate that such a consenus did in fact occur.
Having been there, I have to say that the folks with stated distress over the "policy statement", stopped talking when it became apparent that they weren't being listened to.
As for the PUBLIC that was in attendence, in December as well as the other meetings, they were universally opposed to the idea of "the policy", and would have spent hours expressing that opposition, if they had been allowed to.
A bad business all the way around, and if the County should try to implement it, I think that you can count on a very nasty series of inititavess. To make sure that our County Goverment does not backslide into the bad old ways that allowed the horror of Bull Mt. Anexation by Tigard and Beaverton's past transgressions.
Clearly, Tigard in particular, but all of the cities in general have not learned the lesson that the WILL OF THE PEOPLE neeed to be respected and protected. It will continue to be up to the county to protect us from the less than tender mercies of the various cities in Washington County.
"Jim Ourada"
(email verified)
Thu, Apr 09, 2009 at 08:39 AM